Repetitive motion

I've started swimming again. There's an indoor pool 10 minutes from our apartment, and after many weeks of just talking about it I finally bought a proper swim suit and goggles and have started swimming laps. I used to swim laps in DC, but I haven't swum since I moved to Switzerland, which means I haven't been swimming - in the workout sense of the word - since early 2000. I'm a bit of a sea turtle among the porpoises but it feels wonderful to be in the water again. After a five year break I'm surprised and pleased that I can swim laps for 30 minutes with a minimum of wall-hanging.

What I remember most about swimming, aside from the fact that it took an inch off of my hips, is how much it jump-started my brain. Something about the sheer repetitive boredom of swimming - back and forth and breathe and exhale and turn and again - sent my mind digging in little corners like a child going through the drawers when nobody is looking. There is very little to do while swimming; since I was marking myself by time rather than distance I didn't even have to count the laps, I just glanced at the wall clock every now and then. My mind could shut down entirely or skitter around like a colt as it chose. I was in graduate school at the time and slogging through a dissertation proposal that was all over the place. I had a fine general topic, but in political science, especially American politics, you need nice, neat, testable hypotheses. I couldn't define my questions, not in the way a political scientist is supposed to define them. I kept handing fuzzy draft after fuzzy draft to my ever patient chair. Then one day I handed him a short two page synopsis which he read overnight; it was essentially a list of 13 testable hypotheses.

Thirteen. That's a dissertation and a half. Maybe two.

The next day he handed it back and said "This is what I've been waiting for. What happened?" Without thinking about how silly it might sound, or considering if it was the sort of thing one should say to one's chair, I replied "I started swimming." "Well good," he said without missing a beat, "keep doing laps." Being a swimmer himself he understood what I was saying, how something about the repetitive motion of laps frees your brain, lets it jump off its regular tracks and stumble onto something truly creative. While your body is engaged doing one thing, your mind sneaks off and does something else. Didn't Einstein once say he got his best ideas in the shower, or is that apocryphal? I don't know. All I know is that I'm swimming. And I'm writing.

Now if Small Boy would sleep more than 14 seconds a day, we'd be on to something.